Network analysis is typically accomplished with active or passive techniques, such as active operation, administration and maintenance (OAM) or passive OAM techniques. Active OAM techniques add data or functions to a network that are intended to collect information on a hop-by-hop basis, such as Internet protocol service level agreement (IPSLA) data, ping probes, and/or synthetic traffic. However, since active OAM techniques add functions to a network, active OAM techniques do not necessarily capture real behavior of typical traffic (i.e., user or production network traffic) and also add additional overhead to a network. Meanwhile, passive OAM techniques, such as packet captures and network analysis appliances in the network, only provide visibility into a portion of the network (i.e., visibility is restricted to the visibility of a server or a client being utilized by the passive OAM techniques).
By comparison, in-band or in-situ OAM (iOAM) techniques insert or include operational and telemetry information into a packet as the packet traverses a path between two points in a network. Specifically, iOAM enriches actual traffic with additional headers to capture path information as packets of the traffic traverse nodes (i.e., network devices) in a network. iOAM techniques are referred to as “in-band” or “in situ” OAM techniques because the OAM information is carried with the data packets as opposed to in “out-of-band” packets dedicated to OAM. However, iOAM complements out-of-band OAM mechanisms and can utilize various forms of data that can be transported in various protocols (i.e., embedded or encapsulated into a variety of transports).